Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Recording Inner Lights

We're down to mixing on the new Inner Lights EP. Everything went pretty well with the new set up, except the loo going on the fritz! These guys have a great sound combining elements of late '60's early 70's era Stones and Who with the atmosphere and energy of more recent UK artists like the Verve and plenty of southern jam for good measure. A very satisfying sound indeed. We recorded to a digital setup at 24/88.2Khz and stemmed everything down to 1/2 inch tape and sent it back through the tubes to final mix. I had a chance to use some cool new plugs in the mix including the Waves API stuff which really brought some character to the drum bus, as well as the amazing freeware Dominion transient designer-style compressor to get the drums to cut through even more. For drum mics we used the usual 57's and 58's as well as a pair of SE1's for overheads. We tracked 7 channels of Ron's drums and one channel of Chris bass DI'd through a TL Audio Fat Man 2 Pre/Compressor. We set up Trey in the hall and mic'd his AC30 with a 58 on the grill and another about ten feet away and ten feet up, flipped the phase and got some great tone. We put my Space Echo in his effects chain for a more retro sound and some of that tape grit. Worked well. For Kevin's guitar, I wanted to distinguish it a bit from Trey's so we used a 60's Silvertone tube amp and it plays nicely against the Vox amp. On the lead vocal we used a Rode NT1 FET micthrough a Presonus tube pre and that seemed to do the trick.

Overall I was pleased with the results we got in just a couple of 4 hour sessions. Next up to finish the mix. Check back for that.......